Maputo, 19 Apr (AIM) – The Mozambican government on Saturday claimed once again that there is no genuine fuel shortage in the country.
For the past week, every day government spokespersons have said there is sufficient petrol and diesel in the country to meet the current demand, and have hinted darkly at hoarding by retailers. Yet despite these assurances, queues of vehicles thirsty for fuel have continued to build up at filling stations in Maputo and other cities.
On Saturday morning brigades from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy visited Maputo filling stations to ask why they are running out of fuel. According to a report in the independent daily “O Pais”, they measured how much fuel was in the tanks and confronted the managers. The ministerial teams demanded to see the paperwork for how much fuel each of the filling stations had purchased.
The National Director of Hydrocarbons and Fuel, Felisbela Conhete, told reporters categorically “no, no, no! There is no fuel crisis, because we have fuel! The fuel is in the ports”.
“There is abnormal behaviour at the fuel pumps”, Conhete claimed. “Although there is fuel in the tanks, this fuel is apparently not reaching the pumps. So we have set up teams to check whether the amounts the retailers have requested are really reaching the fuel pumps”.
She alleged that the crisis has been provoked by the distribution companies and threatened tough measures against them.
Filling stations in the Maputo area acquire their fuel from the oceanic terminal in the port of Matola. Hence, there should not be any shortages at filling stations in the Maputo/Matola area. “We are here to understand what is happening in the distribution chain of this fuel”, said Conhete. “At this pump, we note that there are some discrepancies between what was requested and what actually arrived at the pumps. We have taken note, we have the records, we know which distributor supplies this pump”.
“We shall interact with this distributor”, she promised. “We shall work to find out why this fuel is really not being distributed”.
“These queues make no sense”, said Conhete, “because the fuel has left the port. So our job is to find out where the bottleneck is.” She threatened to be “implacable” towards fuel distributers found to be violating the rules laid down by the Ministry.
The informal rationing scheme implemented in many filling stations, whereby each motorist can only buy 1,000 meticais worth of fuel (enough for 12 litres, was the initiative of the managers of the stations, she said, and had nothing to do with the government.
The filling stations are receiving less fuel than they asked for, she added, and so the managers had decided to limit the amount each client could buy, so that everybody could receive some fuel. Conhete believed this rationing will end as soon as the filling stations received the amount they asked for.
News that the Strait of Hormuz was once again open spread quickly on Saturday, raising hopes that the crisis was over. But, since the United States refused to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, the Strait was soon shut again.
(AIM)
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